My Kids & Me

I arrived in Dublin Wednesday evening. Somehow the 1-hour flight from Heathrow made it in 30 minutes. How is that even possible? I'm staying at The Marker Hotel again. I stayed at The Marker when I first came to Dublin two years ago. Back then, it was their grand opening. This is one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in. Incredible service (more on that in a bit).

Thursday and Friday I was teaching a 2-day Tableau class at the Facebook office. Since I was last here, Facebook has moved into a new office right next to The Marker.

Thursday evening, my good friend Ivan took me to a local eatery called Lolly & Cooks. We kind of had to go here since nothing else was open. All of the pubs stop serving food at like 5:30pm. It's strange!

We enjoyed a light meal of fish before taking on these amazing desserts. I went for the red velvet cake, while Ivan chose the Mississippi Mudpie cupcake.

After dinner we met Ivan's team for a couple of drinks at The Ferryman, which is …

Tuesday night was my last night in London. After another full day making more Tableau Jedis, I decided to go for a run. I’ve been seeing lots of great night pictures of Tower Bridge on Instagram, so I created a route for myself from the hotel, down to the Thames River, over to Tower Bridge and back.

Along the way, I ran by The Shard.


Then made it down to Tower Bridge, which seems to look different to me at night this time compared to when Beth and I were here last summer. Perhaps not though.


And on the way back to the hotel, I went past St. Paul’s Cathedral to get a picture there too. It can be challenging to run in London because I constantly see this I want to take pictures of.


Wednesday morning after going into the office for a couple conference calls, I walked over to St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, which has the most incredibly detailed archicture on the outside...


…and really a beautiful interior as well.



From there, I went to St. Pancras International train terminal, which is wh…

In my two previous trips to London, I never got the chance to make it down to Wimbledon. I went down Saturday around lunch time for a meeting and since that ended quickly, I decided to walk down to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of the Wimbledon Championship. You can walk through the museum for free, but I decided to ask about a tour. One started a few minutes later so I decided to join along. I’m happy I did. 
The culture, secrecy and beauty of the club reminded me of Augusta National. The AELTC has the same vibe to it (or maybe lack thereof). Everything is pristine and you can tell a lot of care is taken to make everything perfect.
Here are some pictures from my tour.

I'm near the peak week of my training for the Livermore Half Marathon, which entails long runs on Sundays. This is the most intensive running I've ever done, but I know it'll pay off as long as I don't injure myself.  Since I'm in London and hadn't seen much of Hyde Park other than Kensington Palace, I decided to head over there and run around until I got my miles in.


I took a few pictures along the way, so here's a slideshow of them.

Friday evening I left for a 13 day trip to London and Dublin to leads training classes for Facebook. I flew Virgin Atlantic for the first time this trip in their Upper Class cabin (Facebook flies employees in business class on international trips) and it was a wonderful experience. I’ve flown business class with Delta, British Airways and Emirates before and it’s remarkable how different they all are. 
With Virgin, the experience starts in the swanky airport lounge. I snuck this picture so that I would remember the vibe. Everything is very blue and dark and the waitresses and bartenders are extremely attentive.

For a quick pre-flght snack, I had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. It was quite yummy!

There wasn’t any wifi service on the flight, so I watched one movie, ate dinner, then went to sleep. Virgin has the lay flat seats, which makes sleeping much more comfortable. I didn’t wake up until an hour before we landed to have breakfast. There were some people, however, that chose t…